Michael Paterniti

Ring Kuot, a 15-year-old Sudanese boy, was rumored to be eight feet three. And until Leonid's emergence at eight feet four inches last spring, people generally assumed that Radhouane Charbib of Tunisia, at seven feet nine, was the tallest documented man in the world.

Roja Dove - who, at 58, is a stock-straight six feet and handsome with lantern jaw, blue eyes, and impeccably combed silvering hair on the sides of an otherwise tanned bald head - may possess the finest nose in the world.

As a kid, I watched 'Bugs Bunny' cartoons, and for some reason Pepe Le Pew, the indomitable French skunk pursuing his would-be kitty paramour, left his mark on me: became an instant emblem of odoriferous hubris, hedonistic bad behavior. He was an entry-level Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a rookie Marquis de Sade.

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.